ZGo added

I've added another (better) java applet to review games and play with tsumego. I just uploaded the applet and a couple of files, to check how it works.

Sample 1: Kogo's Joseki dictionary.
The size of this file makes the whole blog load slowly, so this is the reason for not making it load on the homepage. Click on the next applet to load it on a different window.











Sample 2: samourai (5k) vs. kkawakatsu (5k)





















Please, if you find any interesting game you'd like to share with us, say it!! And I'll try to upload it the next time.

Modified: There was a bug on the link, I think it works now.

Kogo's joseki dictionary

The deeper you get into the world of Go, the biggest the need for patterns. There is where Kogo's joseki dictionary comes into our way: it's a dictionary of joseki patterns, with some thousands in it, and their respective commentaries.

Once you open it, you'll see the different variations and their comment. It is here (On the ocomments) where some variations include the * symbol to mark their rellevance. Trick plays are also marked as such, with their continuations.

For more info and download, check Kogo's dictionary site.

There is a java applet added to the site on the lower left, so that you can use the dictionary without leaving the page, though I personally recommend using your own preferred program.

You may also find interesting the Joseki section at Sensei's

Go lessons

I'd like to comment on a couple of resources, that appear on newspapers, I came up with:

-"Go lessons" by The Korean Times: an active source of go lessons covering from the very beginning to deeper concepts.
-"The magic of Go" by The Daily Yomiuri: a higher, deeper and complicated weekly column about go, packed with a couple of tsumegos, though you have to be keen on kifus to be able to read this one.

If after reading this you are still doubtfull about a specific move, ask yourself the "famous" 4 questions for beginners:
1.Do you have a weak group?
If yes, reinforce it.
2.Does your opponent have a weak group?
If yes, plan to attack it.
3.Can you make a big territorial move?
If yes, do it.
4.Could your opponent make a big territorial move or does s/he have a big territory?
Try to prevent, destroy or reduce it with appropriate measures.

If you still haven't checked the Sensei's page for beginners, give it a try!!

One last resource are Go books, which can be found easily on go shops or peertopeer programs, though I wouldn't recommend this for beginners... but this is just a personal opinion

Test your reading skills

I just found an interesting site on the internet: Go-test

This test checks your reading skills by showing 20 different board positions where you have 5 possible choices. Each of them gives you a specific score and, at the end, you'l get an approximation of your current reading level.

It classifies me as a 5k, though I was recently crushed by a 8k player... so I've got my doubts about its accuracy...

Gnu Go review

Hi there,

Today I'm going to publish the first review about free Go software. The first one I've reviewed is Gnu Go.

As an introduction for the people who don't know what I'm talking about: there are two types of programs of Go: on one side there are the interfaces for playing against human people or replaying your games, and on the other side we have the "artificial intelligence" (or thinking programs) which you can play against.

So here it goes (by the way, I'm not a native English-speaker):



You also have one high-resolution version available at:
Gnugo .avi (31 MB)

I hope you enjoy it and let me know your comments!!

Tsumego 3

So, here it is. This is the situation where I found myself yesterday, playing as black. This time I could manage to live, but lost the game anyway.

Black to live - Easy

Visit to local Go club

Yesterday I went to a local Go club with a couple of friends. We managed to visit the Go club "la pedra" in Barcelona, which is the oldest one as well as the biggest in Barcelona.

Each one of us expected something different about the Go club, so we were most surprised when we found the place. It was a flat on the center of the city, mainly dedicated to chess, where some people showed up on tuesday nights (just 8 go players without us).

After the presentations my friends managed to play one against each other and abandoned me alone with local go players.
A man offered himself to play against me, 9 stones handicap game... against a 3 dan!! You can imagine what does a 10-kyuish do against a 3d... it was a massacre. As well as the next game against a 8kyu French player, where I just couldn't focus on the game...

Well, now I'll post a tsumego I had to face during these games.

Tsumego 2

Well, here I'll leave an unsolved tsumego I faced during a game recently. During the game I didn't have much time, so I couldn't kill. Afterwards, I've spent quite a lot of time on it, but so far it has been impossible (I'm around 9 kyu, if it means anything to you). So, here it is: Black to seki. In the beginning I posted this problem as "black to kill", but after realising it might be impossible, I leave it as "black to seki".

The solution is available on the comments.

Anyone wants to try to kill???

Nakano's God Hand

April 9, 2006 54th NHK Cup Go Tournament
Nakano Yasuhiro 9 dan(B) vs. Ishida Yoshio 9 dan(W)

With this great video I'm going to introduce the concept of "God's Hand" move into Go. Which is basically the contrary of what the video shows.

Most of you might already know this concept from Hikaru no Go, so this won't tell anything new to you.

God's hand move is a PERFECT move, and it's a perfect move in that exactly position. Each turn there is a possible God's hand move, and the better you are, the closest you are to that move.
So, you may say, if everyone plays God's hand move, is it a draw? No, God's hand move is something abstract, because only God would understand how perfect it is. Top world go players might play it without realising (though I'm doubtful that they play it too), but it is absolutelly impossible to play them in a row. And once again, we wouldn't even know about it!!

Moyo Go Studio for free

Finally, Moyo Go Studio, known as one of the best Go programs, has been released for free by the author. Currently it is only available for Windows and I still haven't tried so this is NOT a review and I can't tell if I'll make it work under Unix.

For the feature list I'd send you to the author's site, but here is a short list I extracted:
- Joseki, tesuji, fuseki and shape expert.
- Kombilo-style pattern search
- GnuGo client
- SGF editor
- Sql database system
- Export to Sensei's Library format
- Sensei's Library search
- Audio commentary

The limitations of the free product is that it lacks the 400.000 professional games database, there won't be updates or bug-fixes and the publishing/printing tool isn't available.

The download can be done through emule, bittorrent or direct download.
I've uploaded the file to a file hosting service so that we all have it for direct download instead of peer-to-peer. I just download the program from bittorrent at a 170 k/s ratio, which is just fine anyway. This is the address for the direct download:

http://hosted.filefront.com/alejostenuki/

Please, if you want to tell this link to anyone, refer them to the blog.

Most important GO sites

Most of you might already know these site, but I'm pretty certain that there will be someone who has missed some of them, so here comes the list:

Sensei's Library: it's a wiki page only for Go, if you want to know something about Go, it's there! If you don't find it there, it might not exist.
Go Teaching Ladder: you'll find reviews of games made by all sort of players, from pros to 30kyu. You can also submit your games if you want them to be reviewed.
Go problems: a huge collection of tsumego (go problems) to solve directly on your browser or to download to your PC.
Rec.games.go: this is THE Go group. Nice amount of activity and antiquity too.
Go clubs: a list inside Sensei's where you can find your nearest Go club.
Go servers: there are many of them out there and you only need one of them to play, I'll point some:

• Kiseido Go server (KGS): Lots of players, ranking vary too much, friendlier people, nice interface.
• Pandanet (IGS): nice interface, lots of players of high ranking, I had some trouble while registering.
• Cyberoro: I haven't tried it, though I've heard good reviews from friends.

Go Base: A list of professional Go games and players. It has a database search engine for searching through the collection and includes an online replayer that can display the games found in the database. It's quite difficult to register as they ask for non-free email account and verification from your Go club.
Go Discussions: a forum about go with thousands of users and lot of activity. You can also find reviews of Go software and equipment.

Go software for Linux

Currently there are several programs which allow you to play Go on your computer while running windows. The main problem in this case is that most of them are written for windows and, later on, moved into Unix systems.

First of all, I must warn that Go artificial intelligences aren't as brilliant as chess or other games; in fact, Go is one of the two games were humans beat easily computers. So, they are ok for beginners, and fun for adept, but they make mistakes a human would never make and, therefore, players who often play computers tend to have some bad habbits.

I'm working on Ubuntu (developed from Debian, and using Gnome), just in case you wanted to know. Some of the Go programs for windows can be used under emulators like Wine or Cedega, but I don't recommend doing so, mainly because the decrease of speed in the game.

Here I'll comment the ones I've tried:

-Gnu Go: A MUST. This is one of the best artificial intelligences out there for free.

-Cgoban1: The first Cgoban (now developed for KGS) has a weak appearance and it's not comfortable while checking variations.

-glGo: One of the best viewers for free has some bugs when it comes to Linux. Preferences window doesn't appear, some items at the menu are "empty" (they are there, you can click, but you won't see what you are clicking on till you've done it), editing buttons doesn't work either. But it's got a nice look and a great tree view. And it's got the player-manager plugin to track your games and your friends'. This one is very useful to view games with multiple variations and comments.

-qGo: One of the latest discoveries, it works with IGS and it also allows you to play against Gnugo or replay any game. It's got good marks on everything: nice stones, nice windows layout. The only drawback of this program is the lack of 3D graphics and, most important, the tree. Currently this is the one I'm using for playing against GnuGo.

-Quarry: It's got a really impressive tree and it's fully compatible with unix systems. The problem is that I don't really like this "browny-white" stones. It doesn't allow you to play through internet.

-Jago: Sorry, but I still don't like the variations system. It's not a bad interface if you are used with this kind of trees.

-Kombilo: This is available both for windows and linux, it's not a playing program, it's a go database program. Its main purpose is to search for games in which a given pattern or position occurs. You can also search for other criteria (like time period, players, events). (extracted from Kombilo's site). So, for example, if during a game you find a position where you don't know what to do, you can check what professional players did by analysing your collection of professional games. The games aren't included, you must get them from somewhere else.

-Hikarunix: a live CD distro of Linux based on Go, though you can install it too. It's got around 12 go tools, including some of the mentioned above, a snapshot of Sensei's Library ... For not Linux users: you can try this without uninstalling your current system, just download the file, burn it into a CD and reboot your computer. Once it is rebooting, insert the CD and you'll get to Hikarunix. It won't modify anything of your original system, if you want to go back to it, just reboot and remove the CD.

My personal experience is that I end up using qGo with GnuGo, and Kombilo for analysing. For playing through internet I prefer KGS site, so I can't really tell about IGS clients.

Go problem

From time to time I'll add a new Go problem to my post, and the following post will all have the problem in case. You'll have to find the right path for black to live, or white to kill... who knows... I'll solve the problem in a week and then post another one.

If blacks starts, how can he survive?

Remember: columns are letters, rows are numbers. So the first black stone starting from the left is at A2..

Clocks

Now I'm gonna talk about boardgames clocks. You might find them on chess shops as most of them are originally designed for this game.

You may find 2 main types: analogical and digital. The first ones offer a lower price, nicer outlook and are easy to use. Digital clocks, on the other hand, offer much more options but lack of the "traditional appeal" from analogical and cost much more.

If we apply the word "clocks" to the world of Go, you'll find that the options are quite limited:
-Clock application for palm or pocket pc. For Palm I recommend Ghronos.
-Chronos: it is said to be the best Go clock in the shops. It allows Canadian and Japanese overtime, it's analogic and it's price is around 100$.
-DGT XL: Only allows Japanese overtime.
-Excalibur GameTime II: it allows both Japanese and Canadian overtime. It's costs goes from 25$ to 70$.

A month ago I discovered a clock which would fulfill all of my expectations: Excalibur GameTime II It is a digital clock mainly designed for chess, but also includes several Go modes and a CrossWord mode (Scrabble and so on). It's got 80 chess preset modes, 10 Go modes and a mode for CrossWord; it also allows the user to set up to 5 preset modes.

For more information on clocks: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Clocks

For more information about Excalibur: http://www.thechesspiece.com/ReviewGameTime.htm

If you happen to be interested in the last one there are several options for buying it:
-Chess books from Europe: It costs around 26$. Shipping: 10$ (USA to Spain).
-Wholesalechess: 32$. Shipping 20$ (USA to Spain).
-"The only shop about chess in Barcelona": 75$.

I guess it's obvious which one to choose, right?

Tenuki

Tenuki is a Go word, it's original from Japan, though it has been adopted into English by Go gamers, and means "playing somewhere else". So, if white and black are fighting on one corner of the board and, all of a sudden, one of them decides to play a stone far away (with nothing related to the previos fight), that would be a tenuki.

Currently, I'm facing a hard studying period for an special exam, so this blog is "doing something elsewhere" and therefore the name of the blog.

Intro

Finally I decided to publish a blog.

As you can see, it'll be written mainly in English, but I allow anyone to write in Spanish too, so feel free to do so.

This blog will let me publish some ideas I come up with while playing games, mainly Go (baduk) but also some other hobbies, like kiting and so on.

For anyone who might want to learn Go I'll recomend this link:
English: http://playgo.to/interactive/
Spanish: http://www.thinkchile.com/playgo/

I'll leave the English link at one side of the blog. If you want to know more about Go, visit: Sensei's Wikipedia

Currently I'm studying for an exam, so I won't make many posts till 21st January.